


Of Fire and Sand

by panda_shi, sub_textual



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Epic, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, M/M, Multi, Novel, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Slavery, Slow Build, War, Warring states
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:40:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4718096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_shi/pseuds/panda_shi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kakashi is the former crown prince of a fallen empire that was conquered by Iruka’s family. During an assassination attempt upon the Umino crown prince, Kakashi and Iruka meet for the first time. As reincarnation is canon in Naruto, this is the story of the first incarnation of Kakashi and Iruka, set thousands of years before the start of Naruto. It will be filled with quite a lot of political intrigue/machinations, and will deal with war, power, and empires, and will ultimately result in a love story that transcends time and even death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“There is no greater glory than to die for love.”_  
>  \- Gabriel García Márquez
> 
>  _But at my back I always hear_  
>  _Time's wingéd chariot hurrying near;_  
>  _And yonder all before us lie_  
>  _Deserts of vast eternity._  
>  \- Andrew Marvell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter written by sub_textual

_Long ago, before the rise of the shinobi and the concept of chakra, long, bloody wars were waged over land, power, and control of the Shinju, a divine tree that was said to be the host of the gods. It was said that the tree grew from nourishment it received from the soil soaked in the blood of men that died on the hallowed ground upon which it grew, feeding the divine fruit which blossomed once every thousand years, and freeing the spirits of the gods that resided within it._

_Whosoever controlled the land upon which the Shinju grew would be granted immeasurable power, fortune, and the right to rule over all the lands that fell under its shadow, while those who died noble, honorable deaths on the hallowed grounds would live on for an eternity of lifetimes._

_Power, glory, and eternal life._

_Such was the way of the gods._

*

The sound of hoof beats in the distance woke him.

They were not close enough to sound like thunder, but instead, resounded in a quiet staccato that reverberated through the ravine below the cliff that the small group of four men had decided to camp on. From the sound of it, there were six horses, which could either mean a solitary group of six riders or it could mean a fully weaponized cavalry unit with foot soldiers, whose footsteps were too quiet to be heard over the expanse of the ravine.

Kakashi turned on his bedroll, catching sight of his retainer, Tenzou, who was rising across the way. It seemed he was not the only one who had been woken from sleep by the sound of the hoof beats below. The two men carefully navigated their way out of their bedrolls, and moved to rouse their comrades, who soon joined them to overlook the dark ravine. Any group of travelers who ventured so far out into the badlands with only the muted light of the stars to illuminate their path were either desperate to get to their destination or calculated in their risk.

Tenzou peered down at the shadowy figures moving in the ravine as he began to dress. “Do you think it’s him, my lord?”

The waxy light of the moon above gave meager illumination to the path below. Their vantage point was not ideal to make out much more than the echoes of hoof beats and shadows stirring in the distance. Just beyond, however, was a clearing where the ravine walls widened to a small oasis, allowing the pool of water below to catch just enough moonlight that they might be able to better discern their target.

“It’s hard to tell. We’ll need to move south to gain advantage,” Kakashi determined, and the group set to the task of gathering weapons and sliding on armor, metal quietly clinking in the still of night.

They cut through the shadows, warriors clutching resistance in their hands sharpened into weapons with which they might use to reclaim pieces of what they had lost. Their footsteps were quiet and whisper-soft as they moved across the clifftops, navigating the craggy path with skill and ease as they tracked the hoof beats by sound.

A tiny shadow moved to crouch by Kakashi's side, small in shape but fast and deadly in speed and skill. Sasuke was the youngest of them all, a skinny little thing of pale skin and raven black hair, barely even ten years old. His eyes had the rust of too many years beyond the ones that shaped him. He’d seen too much war. “Six horses usually means royalty.”

“Or a merry band of wanderers lost in the night,” Kakashi lightly replied, but the steel in his gaze belied the levity in his tone.

Sasuke most likely was right. For a boy so young, it was impressive how discerning he could sometimes be in situations such as this. It was why he was, by far, Kakashi’s best student. Had the last Shinju War not been lost, Sasuke might never have found himself kneeling in the dirt on a cliff far from home in the dead of night, strapping on armor with hands that were as small as they were skilled at taking a man’s life. He was too young to truly remember the glory of Kagutsuchi, an ancient city that ruled the sacred lands for over one thousand years, or the great crimson gates that rose as high as the heavens which protected it. Nor would he recall the nine hundred and ninety nine steps carved in fine marble cut from the quarries of the gods that led to the palace in the sky. He was far too small then, a child who never knew the great city of Kagutsuchi before the Kamikaze invaded and burned it to the ground, calling it a fitting end for a city named after a god of fire.

Kakashi found him in the rubble of an empire, covered in ash and dust and blood. It was the fire in his eyes, even as a small child, that convinced Kakashi to pick him up and take him along as he fled the ruins of a burning city he once called home with a few of his retainers and a group of civilians who had hoped to one day call him King of the Divine and Keeper of the Tree. Some still did.

But the blood of the divine no longer ran in Kakashi’s veins -- he was no longer a prince in line for the throne, and had not been for ten years. He certainly wasn’t a king, either. The thousand year promise of fortune for the Hatake clan had withered and burned to dust, along with the once great city of Kagutsuchi at the hands of the Umino clan which rose in the west, seated in the windy city of Kamikaze, far across the river valley and the badlands that stretched to the very edge of where the city walls rose.

An empire built on blood and sand.

“There,” Tenzou whispered as he stopped in his steps when the shadows of the first two riders came into view in the clearing, distant voices carrying in the wind as they stopped for water, which was as rare as it was precious in the badlands. Moonlight glinted off metal, allowing Kakashi to clearly make out the unique plated armor with which the Kamikaze army adorned their horses -- an impressive display of delicately forged scales, stronger than steel and almost impossible to pierce. Dragon scales, they called them, named after the water dragons that emblazoned the Kamikaze banners, the sigil of the royal Umino clan who ruled the seas for hundreds of years, and now, all the sacred lands under the sky.

“Kamikaze,” Genma, his archer, murmured from behind Kakashi, the senbon in his mouth clipping the edges of the word.

“I can see that,” Kakashi said, just as the third rider joined the first two, followed by foot soldiers -- two bannermen and then two more, marching neatly in rows as they followed their commanders to the water. At the sight of the banners, the men upon the cliff tensed, a collective breath held between them. This moment had been a year in the making, a year of careful planning and maneuvering, whispers and secrets traded in the night when the dragons weren’t watching.

Two more men emerged from the shadow, followed by another four, each pair holding one of the heavy wooden poles of an ornately carved palanquin. Even in the dark, Kakashi could make out the elaborate golden spires that adorned the roof of the covered litter, which was almost as large as a small room, and could allow at least two people to comfortably ride or recline -- royal transport fit for a king or his sons.

“It’s him,” Sasuke whispered breathlessly as he stared down at the caravan. From their vantage point, the group could make out six riders, four bannermen, four foot soldiers, and twelve palanquin bearers, twenty-six in all. Considerably more than what they had originally expected, but not entirely an impossible force to contend with. The foot soldiers would be easy enough to subdue; the palanquin bearers and bannermen a mere afterthought. It was the riders that they really had to worry about -- one strike from a greatsword forged through the fires and sand of Kamikaze could cut a man in two.

Should any of them fall in battle, their mission would fail. But it was a risk that they were all prepared to take. After all, it was entirely unheard of for the crown prince and heir to the throne to find himself so deep in the badlands with only a small clutch of soldiers and slaves to keep him company and no witnesses to remember his death -- the perfect opportunity to irrevocably weaken an empire that would never recover from the death of their future king. News of his death would spread like wildfire and create just enough instability that Kakashi might be able to call allies to his side and raise an army strong enough to reclaim what had been lost.

They watched silently as the palanquin was set to rest on the ground and the riders in the rear joined their comrades to water their horses.

“It doesn’t look like they are on guard, my lord,” Tenzou said as he watched the relaxed way the Kamikaze soldiers gathered about the oasis, refilling water skins and snacking on dried dates as though they had nothing to fear from the badlands, even on a night so dark.

Kakashi rose from where he crouched at the cliff’s edge, armor lightly clinking. “We’ll move to strike.”

It took the deaths of three hundred thousand men to conquer the last empire.

But all it would take is the death of one man to bring down this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! We know this is probably pretty confusing, so let us explain the way this AU works. What you are essentially reading is the first incarnation of all the characters of Naruto who live over a thousand years before the canon characters are ever born! Think of this as a very long, slow build epic that will take quite a bit of time to tell. This fic is going to have a big ensemble cast and there will be a lot of political machinations with a love story (or two or three, we haven't decided yet) thrown into the middle of it all. In this particular setting, the Umino clan resides in Wind Country and the Hatake clan resides in Fire Country. 
> 
> Some other notes which may be of interest:
> 
> \- Kagutsuchi is the god of fire  
> \- Kamikaze is the god of wind, and is also translated to "Divine Wind" or "God Wind"  
> \- Ryuujin, the god of the sea, is represented by water dragons 
> 
> We've also taken some liberties with ages, relationships, and background in this fic, and will also have some original characters who will play significant roles. We'll do our best to try and work in as many canon characters as possible, as well!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter written by sub_textual

The badlands are no place for men who have not lived their entire lives upon the sands.

Here, where nothing ever grows, and the sky is as much a prison as it is an escape, equally cruel in the heat of the day as it is during the long, bitterly cold nights, only the most resilient of men can survive. The desert has a way of shaping men who can somehow find a way to live in a place where nothing is alive. It seems only fitting that a city named after the divine wind that shapes the world would find itself rising in the middle of a wasteland, beating out water from the cracked earth and forcing life to grow where it shouldn’t.

The wind that shapes the world shapes men, too, hardening skin and sharpening the grit they take into battle, forming them into warriors as ruthless as they are brazen, wild and vicious and hungry for blood and glory like the desert beasts that prowl the badlands at night. They are not soft men, by any means, these desert people who have been honed into fine blades by the winds of the gods that carried them to victory across the sacred lands, until they stood victorious at the foot of the Shinju with the ancient city of Kagutsuchi burning in their steps. What they could not burn or kill or destroy, they locked up in chains, soldier and civilian alike. Plundering riches and soft, white skin so unlike the coarse leather of their own.

Some of them had never seen skin so fine like that, even if they had heard tales of the great city, of soft people with soft hands and soft skin, where even the commoners who walked the streets and worked the fields wore brightly colored cottons and luxurious silks that they only ever saw in ports and on merchants and upon the sun-browned skin of their rulers. In a land as harsh as Kamikaze, only the descendents of the gods themselves could have skin as fine as the silk that lay upon it. It seemed almost blasphemous that there was so much soft flesh in the cities they conquered, so much food and water and riches beyond even the wildest of imaginations. But when one was shaped by sand and wind and the terrible power of the sea, it was difficult to imagine a life of such easy luxury.

Luxury for many of these desert people was found in ripples of water so clear and cool in the middle of a sea of sand. It made even the hardest of men find easy laughter, sitting and talking and eating dried dates and figs around a fire that warmed them against the cold winds that scraped across the desert at night. The slaves did not share in their laughter, as they were only allowed stale mouthfuls of bread and water, which they drank in great quantities to fill their empty stomachs. One of them, a palanquin bearer, filled a pot with water to set for a boil, perhaps a warm stew for the prince who most assuredly was warm and asleep in his palanquin, as he had not chosen to leave it to join the soldiers around the fire.

In their relative comfort, they did not notice the four shadows that emerged from the ravine. The shadows made no sound as they moved across the sands and into flanking position. Sasuke and Tenzou moved into a pincer formation around the soldiers, while Genma took position upon a higher perch with his bow as Kakashi circled round to target the palanquin.

For soldiers so well trained, it was almost laughable how they had left the palanquin so unguarded, with only a single bannerman and a few palanquin bearers standing nearby. It was almost too easy, how Kakashi managed to find his way to the unguarded side of the litter. Too easy, how he silently slid the exquisitely carved wooden door open to reveal the silk curtain which had been pulled shut for warmth and privacy.

He had expected more resistance. He had been prepared for a bloody battle, for the Kamikaze soldiers to take up arms and fight until someone lay dead on the ground. It did not seem to matter who to these people, so long as there was blood -- _blood before glory_ , they screamed on the battlefield. So much of it, that it turned the fields to slush and made the rivers run red for days after Kagutsuchi fell. He had hoped to return a bit of it to them, to spill blood on their sands the way they spilled blood in his fields and the streets of the city he once called home. But the blood of mere sandmen would not be enough to turn the tide of a rising empire.

The blood of a dragon, however, would be something else entirely.

The curtains, heavy and thick, made of strong silk, gave way easily as Kakashi slid them open silently, unsheathing the tanto strapped to his back. The prince lay with his back towards him, covered with the skins of exotic creatures and exquisitely woven blankets, completely unaware of Kakashi’s presence. It would be too easy to drive the blade into his neck silently, then disappear back into the shadows from where he’d emerged, without ever engaging anyone in combat. But that would be far too unsatisfying -- to kill his enemy as he lay sleeping, without ever laying eyes on his face.

Kakashi could never forget the face of the crown prince, if only because it was scorched into his eyes by the fire that rose behind the prince where he sat upon his warhorse. An entire civilization burned to ashes while Kakashi watched from the shadows, living to fight one day more. There was something about the triumph in the prince’s smile that Kakashi would never forget -- something that was as cold as it was noble, delighting in such needless bloodshed and destruction and calling it glory. His face was one Kakashi committed to memory, so that he would one day look upon it as he killed him.

To have him die quietly, avoiding the guards’ attention would be the easiest path to take. But Kakashi had made a promise standing before an empty grave and a stone bearing his father’s name, which was all he had left of him. He would look upon the face of this man as he died. Look upon it the way he could not look upon his father, because he was too late.

He pushed himself up into the litter and onto the soft, plush cushions that the prince slept upon. Readying the tanto, Kakashi reached out, one hand curling around the prince’s shoulder, and in a swift motion, he rolled him onto his back, blade flying toward the slim column of his throat. But at that very moment, moonlight broke past the opening behind him, spilling past him and into the interior of the palanquin, flooding it with silvery light that washed over his intended target.

The image the crown prince cut in the Burning of Kagutsuchi was a handsome man of golden chestnut hair and piercing green eyes, strong jaw and chiseled cheekbones, with a mouth that formed a brazen, triumphant smile for the glory found in the destruction of an entire people. But the image that stared up at Kakashi was something entirely different. His eyes weren’t green at all, but dark brown and terrified, without any of the resolve of a battle-hardened warrior that had conquered cities and razed the most ancient and beautiful of all to the ground. These eyes had not seen war, had not known battle. They were soft eyes, set in a soft face with a scar scratched across across the bridge of his nose.

Dark, silky hair framed his face, not at all like the thick, burnished golden locks that sat upon the prince’s head like a crown of burned gold. A few strands fell across one eye, making him look quite young in the moonlight. Too young.

_This man was not the crown prince._

Kakashi’s blade hand froze, the sharp edge of the tanto just barely slicing into tender skin, grazing dangerously over a pulse point, where blood flowed fastest. He was not sure why he was hesitating. Though the man whose life he held at the edge of his blade was not the crown prince, he was undoubtedly a member of the Umino court. His sizably large travel party and the finery he was dressed in suggested a royal station. The crown prince’s younger brother, perhaps.

There were three Umino princes, and judging by the look of this one, he must be the youngest. The one who had never gone to war, unlike his older brothers who had spent the better part of the past fifteen years conquering, pillaging, and plundering cities and villages throughout the sacred realm, forcing all into subjugation on bended knee with brute might. He was not the prince that Kakashi had intended to strike.

He was not even a prince that any would particularly mourn, as he did not hold an important station or attend to diplomatic affairs beyond the most superficial. His name was not well known by any outside of Kamikaze, unlike his older brothers whose names and stories of conquest were well known throughout all the lands. His life did not have enough influence, so his death would not cause instability, and would only incur the wrath of the Umino empire.

Innocent civilians far and wide would suffer for it.

The last time rebels had made an attempt against an Umino, the empire saw fit to make an example of any who might defy them, not only hunting down the rebel leaders to the edges of their warrior village, but seeing fit to kill every last man, woman, and child. Their rotting heads were placed on tall stakes that marked the busiest merchant road. A grim message for any who might try to raise arms or voice or mind against the Dragons of the West.

The young prince opened his mouth to scream or raise alarm, but the sound never escaped -- Kakashi’s hand moved to smother it, and then he lunged forward, knife sliding away from the prince’s neck as he switched into a headlock. The prince struggled, legs kicking and arms flailing, a futile thrashing of clumsy motion that only lasted a few seconds before he went still, and Kakashi slowly released the hold he had on him. To ensure that he did not kill the prince accidentally, he held his fingertips to the young prince’s nose, satisfied by the soft, warm breath puffing against his skin.

But at that very moment, the door to the front of the palanquin slammed open and Kakashi found himself staring at a terrified bannerman who looked at him, a strange masked man all in black, crouching over the prince. Before he could slip out the back, the bannerman let out a scream for help. “Assassin!”

Kakashi wearily sighed as he watched the bannerman go for the sword at his side. It appeared that a silent retreat into the night was no longer possible, and the battle he had hoped to avoid after laying eyes upon the prince was one he’d have to fight after all. The bannerman was embarrassingly clumsy and slow with his sword and screamed as he raised it into the air above his head with both hands, but the scream was cut short when Kakashi plunged his blade up under his chin and straight through the back of his neck.

Battle erupted around them, screams resounding through the air as the sound of metal clashing against metal rang through the night. Tenzou, Sasuke, and Genma launched their attacks from all sides, joining Kakashi in the fight. Blood streamed across the sand like spilled wine as soldiers fell, one by one. Their movements were too large and easily predictable. Their voices, too loud when they raised them in battle cries that did not quite help their form. Kakashi’s men were silent, their strikes swift and sure. They moved unencumbered by the heavy plated armor that both protected and slowed the movements of the Kamikaze soldiers. The armor that protected Kakashi and his men was made of hundreds of tiny scales of iron stitched together with boiled leather to form a flexible lattice that was strong and light, and encouraged the speed of strikes. It made them faster, deadlier, and more careful. They dodged where Kamikaze did not, struck where their enemy could not, and were too fast for any to land a critical hit.

It was more of a slaughter than a battle in the end, with the Kamikaze soldiers falling one by one. One of them, in his final moments of desperation, grabbed hold of the horn made out of a conch shell he wore at his waist and blew a pitiful attempt to summon help that would never come. The horn gave a loud, mournful wail in the night that echoed through the ravine. Tenzou put him out of his misery a moment later, the sound dying with him.

In the chaos, the palanquin bearers took the opportunity to flee. Sasuke attempted to give chase until Kakashi called to him. “Sasuke! Let them go. They aren’t our enemy.” His student gave him a confused look, but didn’t try to argue with him.

“You know, this was kind of disappointing. I was expecting more of a fight,” Genma said as he crouched down to pluck one of his arrows from the chest of the man lying at his feet.

Kakashi had also expected the ferocity of the sand to emerge in the battle. He remembered it well, the ruthlessness of the Kamikaze army as it tore through the land in their quest to conquer and claim the Shinju for themselves. These soldiers seemed to be Kamikaze in name only, with none of the skill or the grit. They all died with fear in their eyes. “It’s been a long time since they’ve been to war. They’ve grown complacent.”

“They were weak.” Sasuke said as he wiped the blood off his sword.

Tenzou, who had taken it upon himself to ensure that all the men on the ground were most assuredly dead, soon rejoined them. “They’re all dead, my lord,” he said.

“We need to leave immediately,” Kakashi said. While he didn’t think that anyone heard the sound of the conch shell so far out in the badlands at such an hour, he certainly didn’t want to risk discovery by anyone.

“And leave behind all this armor?” The look that Genma gave him was one Kakashi knew well. Genma had no intention of following the order, and planned on being insubordinate, as he oftentimes could be. He was crouched in the sand beside the body of one of the men, and had taken it upon himself to start stripping off the armor. “Have you seen the quality of this stuff? It would cost us thousands of ryo just to get one set of this. Come on, Kakashi-sama, we gotta take advantage of this.”

“Alright,” Kakashi conceded. “Take what you can, but we need to leave once you’ve--” Kakashi never got to finish his thought. A loud clatter behind him forced his attention away from Genma to the palanquin. Sasuke was hovering over the prince. He must have climbed into the palanquin, most likely to inspect the prince’s body out of curiosity. But what he found wasn’t a dead prince, but a very living, breathing, completely unharmed prince lying in a state of unconsciousness.

“He’s still alive!” Sasuke’s voice rose in a snap, anger narrowing his lips as he drew his chokuto sword. “Why is he alive? He should be dead! He should be--”

“Sasuke, don’t!” Kakashi called out and rushed towards the palanquin to stop him, but Sasuke wasn’t listening. His sword hand continued to come down, and was only stopped by Kakashi grabbing his wrist.

The boy looked at him with a mixture of confusion and anger and disgust. “You were supposed to kill him, Kakashi.”

“He’s not the crown prince.” Kakashi explained, but the fire didn’t go out of Sasuke’s eyes. If anything, it just intensified.

“He’s still an Umino, isn’t he. He wouldn’t be traveling like this, if he wasn’t.”

Kakashi’s silence was answer enough, and it made the fire flare wild in his student’s eyes.

Sasuke had made a vow that he would one day kill every last Umino and any who fought under their banner to avenge his family who had been slaughtered in the Burning of Kagutsuchi. And here was an Umino right below him, and his teacher refused to let him carry out his vengeance. Kakashi could feel his student’s anger in the tremor of his wrist, in the way Sasuke pushed against him with every intent of defying him.

In the confusion, Genma stopped trying to strip armor, and Tenzou drew near, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword.

“My lord, even if he isn’t the crown prince, wouldn’t it be good to send a message to Kamikaze?” Tenzou asked.

“The last time anyone tried to send a message to the Umino clan, villages burned. I’d rather not be the cause of unnecessary death,” Kakashi said, looking right at Sasuke, who’d seen the aftermath of the last rebellion. Kakashi knew the boy remembered how many of them there were. It was a difficult thing to ever forget, when one had traveled a road lined with the dead for many miles.

Genma didn’t seem to agree with this assessment. “Don’t you think it’s pointless to just leave him alive? I mean, we killed all of his soldiers and all his slaves ran away, so one way or another, a message has been sent. Kamikaze’s gonna retaliate somehow.”

Someone will be punished for this, he left unvoiced, but Kakashi heard the words just the same.

“We don’t know how far they’d go to send a message over some dead soldiers. But if we kill a prince and Kamikaze responds, we will never have a chance to raise an army, because there won’t be enough men left alive to fight,” Kakashi responded, and Genma went quiet after that. The fight went out of Sasuke, too. His wrist went limp in Kakashi’s hold, and Kakashi let him go, watching the quiet, dark way Sasuke looked down at the unconscious prince as he sheathed his sword.

Kakashi took the act as acceptance and relaxed, then turned to face Tenzou and Genma. The mission was a failure, a year of work lost. They most likely would never have a chance quite like this again after tonight. The Uminos would not be so foolish as to send another royal caravan so poorly guarded through the badlands, and certainly not one that traveled with the crown prince.

“Gather what you can. We’ll leave before the prince regains consciousness.” Kakashi said after a moment of consideration. Genma did have a point. Though they had lost the mission, they did not have to return home empty-handed. The horses were the finest in all the land, strong steeds that were known for their speed and the raw power in their legs. They could take the horses, along with much of the armor and weapons.

It did not take very long for the men to strip the bodies of armor, weapons, and coin. Sasuke even found a bag of gold, melted into small molds for easier transport. It had been strapped to the chest of the commander under his heavy armor, as though the gold might have somehow made his life more valuable. And perhaps it was. There was enough gold in the bag to not only buy loyalty and influence, but also enough to feed the village through the cold winter months when food was scarce.

Though Kakashi was disappointed in their failure to kill the crown prince, he was satisfied with the treasure they would walk away with. They loaded all of it onto the horses and then mounted them. Genma and Tenzou took the rear with the remaining two horses on a lead tied to the steeds they rode.

Kakashi gave the palanquin one last look before he turned his horse with a soft click of the tongue. The prince was still unconscious, and most likely would stay that way till morning. He had food and water to last him long enough until he would be found by a search party, which would most certainly be sent out for him when he failed to arrive back home during the expected time period. He was young and healthy and though he was by no means strong, he was a dragon of the sand. The sands would never take him like it would anyone else.

The wind that blew through the badlands was bitterly cold, and whipped around them as they rode into the ravine, carrying sand and dust and the smell of blood that weighed down the air and settled deep in the lungs. Kakashi could taste it, iron in the back of his throat. Sometimes it was all he tasted -- the memory of death, the flavor of war.

“Why wasn’t the crown prince with the caravan?” Genma asked as they trotted through the ravine. “Didn’t Kurenai say that the crown prince would be the one traveling?”

“The crown prince was scheduled to visit the training camps of the Black Sands. They must have sent the youngest one instead,” Kakashi said.

“I thought that he was only a prince for show and didn’t do anything important. Isn’t he the one that they keep in the palace all the time, like some kind of princess?” Genma asked, and Sasuke snorted a derisive, amused breath through his nose.

Tenzou trotted up next to Kakashi on his horse, the other horse trailing behind him. “I thought he didn’t have anything to do with the military, so why did they send him to the Black Sands?”

It was a good question that Kakashi had no answer for. If the youngest prince intended to join his brothers in military might, he should have been able to put up a better fight than the pathetic flailing he’d done earlier. It didn’t seem like he’d had any real training in practical combat at all, and it didn’t make sense as to why they would’ve sent a prince who knew nothing of the military to visit the training camp that trained the deadliest and most elite soldiers.

“You should have killed him,” Sasuke muttered, still sour over having let the prince live. “ _I_ should have killed him.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Kakashi said, and Sasuke opened his mouth to protest. But before he could, a deluge of arrows suddenly rained down upon them. The horses went wild, bucking and neighing loudly as the arrows struck against their armor, startling them. Though they were war horses, it seemed they were not accustomed to a barrage of arrows, and the horse Sasuke sat upon bucked so hard that the boy was thrown off, tumbling into the sand.

“Sasuke!” The fall Sasuke had taken was hard. Kakashi wasn’t sure if the boy was injured, and could only hope that his student had managed to take the fall. He struggled to regain control of his own horse, which had been startled by the arrows and had broken into a wild gallop. They had ridden right into a trap, with archers above them shooting down into the ravine, where there was almost no cover. The archers must have been alerted by the sound of the conch shell -- raiders, perhaps, who lived in the desert and waited for opportunities such as this to strike.

Two horses went flying past him in a gallop -- Genma and Tenzou had cut the ones on lead loose. They must not have been able to control them once the arrows started to fly.

Kakashi looked up at the darkened ridge line, and could barely make out the silhouettes of archers in the distance. They were too high for him to target with kunai, and only Genma and Tenzou were armed with bows. The younger men had already begun to return volleys of arrows. Genma struck a flint and lit one of his, sending fire sailing through the night and into the chest of a man who screamed as he fell, flames hungrily licking up over his body, illuminating one of the ridges. There were at least twenty archers, and they all wore Kamikaze armor. These were no sand raiders. They’d ridden right into the path of the Kamikaze army, which was answering the call for help.

This was not a fight they would be able to win. They needed to run.

Smoke filled the ravine as Kakashi lit a handful of smoke bombs and sent them flying, obscuring them from the archers’ line of sight. Shouts echoed overhead as Kakashi turned his horse and charged back towards where Sasuke had fallen. “Retreat!” he yelled as he passed Tenzou and Genma, riding blindly into the cloud of smoke.

It was a dangerous gamble, using smoke as cover. It made them as blind as their enemy, made it so they couldn’t see more than a few feet before them. There was nothing but smoke and the pounding of hooves, and the sand beneath, shifting and swirling. Through the smoke, Kakashi made out a hazy figure. As he drew closer, he realized it was Sasuke. Instead of slowing the gait of his horse, he sped up, taking the reins in one hand and he leaned down, extending his hand towards Sasuke. The boy grabbed hold of his arm and using the momentum of the horse, swung himself up and behind Kakashi.

“Who’s shooting at us?” Sasuke yelled above the wind, his voice almost drowned out by the thunder of the gallop.

“Kamikaze!” Kakashi yelled back, driving his heels harder into the sides of his steed to urge it to run faster.

“I thought we killed them all.”

“We did.”

Up ahead was the clearing that they’d left behind. They could retreat in the opposite direction, far out of reach from the arrows. The ravine on the opposite of the clearing cut a path straight towards Kamikaze, but they would be able to climb onto high ground and find a different path out of the badlands long before they ever saw the city rising in the distance or tasted the salt from the sea just beyond it.  
  
All they needed to do was make it out of the ravine.

They burst out of the smoke and into the clearing. There, just a few feet away, were the abandoned Umino banners lying face-down on the ground, and the fallen soldiers stripped down to their linens lying just beyond. Blood turned the sands dark under the pale light of the moon, tar black pools saturating pristine white sand. The palanquin sat silently and undisturbed in the sand, which whirled around its base like smoke.

Kakashi looked across the broken patch of bodies in the sand.

And there, just in the distance, was a pair of green eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be patient with us! _Of Fire and Sand_ is planned as a very long-form fic (novel, really) but we promise it will eventually build into a love story! It will just take quite a bit of time as the world we're building is quite large. ^^

The crown prince sat astride an enormous black armored beast that was the largest horse Tenzou had ever seen in his life. He’d never seen armor like that either, polished gold scales that stretched down the entire length of his chest. Even his legs shone with gold scales that covered him all the way down to his feet, which were encased in armored pointed shoes. Two crimson water dragons locked in an eternal dance were proudly emblazoned on the chest plate that sat upon the scales. The large claws of some desert beast Tenzou didn’t recognize had been mounted on the prince’s shoulders, a bone lattice overlaying the scales on his chest. This same bone formed the gauntlets of the prince’s arms, and was also fashioned into a horned war helmet that proudly displayed the Umino crest. It made the prince look almost like a god, covered in gold, scale, and bone.

Dozens of crimson banners bearing the gold Umino crest flew behind the prince, and to either side of him was a neat row of mounted archers, each with an arrow drawn in Kakashi’s direction. There were at least forty of them. Tenzou did not have an opportunity to count each one, because arrows were flying, and Tenzou was too, a storm of sand beneath him as he surged towards his king.

Kakashi could not fall now, not after so many years. Not when they’ve come so far.

Tenzou had been with him since they were boys. He’d seen him grow from a young prince, who never quite wanted to be a prince, into a great leader who he believed to be the rightful king of the sacred lands. Kakashi was only fourteen years old during the Burning of Kagutsuchi. With the ever encroaching threat of the Dragons of the West, he had been sent by his father, Hatake Sakumo, to lead a vanguard force of fifty thousand men to intercept Kamikaze in the river valley. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Kamikaze invaded from the south by sea, Tenzou believed Kakashi would have led them to victory and pushed back the insurgent force.

Even at fourteen, Kakashi was a brilliant commander; Tenzou had heard stories of the prodigy prince who was already a capable warrior by the tender age of five. His father ensured that his genius son would receive an education that was befitting the Son of the White Fang, Future King of the Divine and Keeper of the Tree. Kakashi was not raised in the royal palace surrounded by servants and handmaidens and teachers who wore fine silk and taught military strategy from behind the safety of dusty books. Instead, he was sent to live amongst his people and train and fight alongside the men he would one day lead. He learned discipline, learned humility, and most of all, he learned how to survive.

There was nothing Kakashi couldn’t overcome. Not if he had the proper tools, if he had the right time to plan. The assassination had been Kakashi’s idea too. It would have been flawless, over in a heartbeat, had it been the right prince. And yet, here they stood, outnumbered and so defenseless, not even all of Kakashi’s experience or all the faith Tenzou had in his king would help them escape. Kakashi was his friend, his comrade, his leader. But more than anything, Kakashi was his king, and Tenzou was prepared to die for him. As the arrows rained down, Tenzou charged in front of his king with his horse, fully intending to use himself as a shield.

But the arrows ended up falling short of their mark -- or perhaps they fell exactly where they were intended, forming a neat line in the sand mere inches away from where Tenzou had drawn his horse to a halt before his king.

For a long moment, it was as though time stood still. An eerie silence fell upon the sands that lay between them.

“Umino Ousame.” Kakashi’s voice filled with something dark and dangerous.

The crown prince’s green eyes glinted sharply in the moonlight, and when he spoke the common tongue, it was accented with the rounded notes of Kamikaze. “That is, indeed, my name. I would ask you yours, but such respect is not accorded to men quite as base as yourselves.” On either side of him, the archers nocked their arrows once more, drawing back the strings as they carefully aimed in their direction. “Do you make it a habit of attacking all caravans that travel the badlands, or just the imperial ones?”

Kakashi said nothing, meeting the prince’s gaze with defiant eyes as cold as steel.

Tenzou found it strange that they were still alive and that Ousame had not yet given the order to kill them. Their attack had led to the deaths of imperial guards and allowed for slaves to escape; they had also targeted a caravan that carried one of the princes. That they still drew breath at all was nothing short of astonishing. Kamikaze was not known to be merciful to enemies of state.

Ousame regarded them coolly, and when it appeared that none of them had any intention of answering his question, he said, “I find it most curious that you attacked an armed caravan and somehow managed to slaughter the entire imperial guard, yet left my brother alive.”

“We were only interested in treasure, not in the life of a mere boy.” Kakashi said and it became clear to Tenzou that his king had no intention of letting on who he truly was. Perhaps he believed that keeping their identities secret might somehow save their lives or bide them time enough to escape.

“You claim to be mere bandits,” Ousame did not sound convinced. “Bandits who speak the common tongue with a Kagutsuchi inflection, and have the power to subdue the imperial guard of the most powerful army in the world.”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call them worthy of being the imperial guard. After all, they did die rather quickly.” Kakashi’s words seemed as though they were meant to provoke the prince into action, but Ousame stood his ground and did not rise to the occasion.

“You do not deny that you are men of Kagutsuchi, then.”

“It’s kind of difficult to be men of a state that no longer exists, isn’t it.”

A cold desert wind scraped across the sands at that moment. Ousame studied the men before them for what felt like an eternity, giving them all a scrutinizing look, as though he was not yet certain as to what their fate would be. Surely, whatever fate awaited them would not be pleasant. Tenzou could have anticipated any number of fates, all of which ended in rather bloody deaths. What he didn’t anticipate was the crown prince’s next words. “Lay down your weapons and you may yet live to see another dawn.”

“Don’t believe him, he’s going to kill us as soon as we put our weapons down.” Sasuke hissed from behind Kakashi. “We should just--” The boy never got to finish his sentence, and Tenzou was glad for it. Sasuke always had quite the temper on him, and terrible self-restraint. The look Kakashi gave him over his shoulder silenced him immediately.

“You are letting us live?” Kakashi asked, cautiously. He made no move to lower his weapons, and neither did any of his men.

“It is clear that you are more than you say you are.” The prince said as he looked across the sands at them. “But I must acknowledge that you had the opportunity to end my brother’s life but saw fit to let him live. For that, I will allow you your lives long enough to face divine judgment on the sands.”

Tenzou felt something like hope rise in his chest at that moment. If they were to face divine judgment, then there might be a slight chance, however small that may be, that Kakashi might yet live. That he might survive. Tenzou did not truly care whether the gods would judge him fairly, but he knew, with every shred of his being, that no god would look down upon the rightful king and condemn him to death. And Kakashi seemed to know this as well, as he looked right into the eyes of the enemy he had spent the past ten years waiting to kill, withdrew his sword, and let go.

 

*

 

The first thing Iruka thought he saw when he opened his eyes was Ousame standing by the glass windows of his room, the sun bright and golden before him, illuminated like a young god. For a moment, it felt like Iruka was still dreaming, but then the shape of his brother, who he loved so much, shifted to someone darker. Someone with a black mask for a face and silver hair and the coldest steel eyes Iruka had ever seen.

Suddenly, Iruka felt a hand on his shoulder that seemed to come from nowhere, and that was enough to throw him into a wild panic. There was a loud clatter as a tray was knocked to the floor when Iruka threw the hand off him, and a collective gasp resounded in the room when he pushed himself up from the bed, frantically getting to his feet with his heart caught in his throat. He realized that he was shaking, hands and knees trembling with fright. All he saw when he looked around him were the worried faces of all of his servants surrounding him and Chiryo, the imperial physician, who was sitting in a chair by his bedside. He was home, the badlands but a nightmare far outside the safety of Kamikaze’s walls. The late morning sun poured through the open windows, leaving Iruka’s bed chambers awash in sunlight.

He breathed heavily as he looked around him and his hands frantically came up to wrap around his throat and felt the texture of a bandage.

It was not a dream. It happened.

That _thing_ had tried to kill him.

“How did I get here?” Iruka barked, angry, tugging lightly on the silk robes that someone had dressed him in.

The servants looked nervously at one another, and seemed unsure whether they should even answer, when Iruka was clearly so upset. Chiryo was the one who managed to answer. “You arrived at sunrise, my lord.”

“I did not ask when! I asked _how!”_ There was a tinge of hysteria in Iruka’s tone. Despite his anger, Iruka was actually still very afraid.

The doors opened then, and Iruka was relieved when Ousame walked in, dressed casually in a light blue tunic that was embroidered in green and gold thread that zigzagged over the sleeves and collar, over which he wore a mantle of a darker shade, which was fastened with a girdle that allowed the fabric to drape loosely to his knees. He calmly surveyed the room, taking in the sight of Iruka. Ousame sighed and gave a wave of his hand. “Leave us.”  

“I have yet to examine him, my lord,” Chiryo said, the concern evident in his voice, as the servants were quick to exit the room.

“You may examine him after I have had a chance to speak with my brother.”

“As you wish, my lord.” Chiryo bowed low at the waist, the crimson mantle he wore over his black robes almost brushing the pristine, white marble floors, and then he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. Ousame gave Iruka a concerned look. And then he spoke to him in the dialect of their home. “What are you doing out of bed, little brother? You should still be resting.”

“ _Aniue_ , he tried to kill me! I do not understand! Why would he try to kill me?!” Iruka paced the marble floors back and forth, unable to stay still and feeling the slight sting of the wound that was probably so hideous under the bandage, it was probably going to scar too. “Why?!”

“Now, now, calm yourself,” Ousame tried to placate him as he crossed the room and set a hand on Iruka’s shoulder. “You mustn’t let yourself get too upset, you’re still recovering from last night’s ordeal. Come, why don’t you lie back down?”

Iruka stilled briefly under his brother’s hold, shaking hands coming up to take his brother’s rougher, larger hand off his shoulder, holding it for moment between his own. Ousame was always the only one who was able to calm him down. Especially after their mother’s passing, his presence was always a warm comfort. It took a while, but Iruka ended up shaking his head. “I’m fine. I just do not understand why he would make an attempt on my life. I do not know him. I have never seen him before. I have not wronged him if I do not know him.”

“Of course you would not have known him, Iruka. He was a mere bandit, a vulgar thief, who wanted to steal your riches.” Ousame guided Iruka to the bed, and Iruka sat down heavily on it. “We caught him, along with his band of thieves, as they were trying to flee with horses and plenty of coin.” His brother gave him a reassuring smile. “He will not be able to hurt you now.”

The words seemed to pacify Iruka because he felt just a touch calmer, even though his hold on his brother’s remained firm. “What is going to happen to them?”

“They will be executed on the morrow in the pits, and the child that was with them will be sent to the mines.” Ousame said and Iruka felt a slight shudder go down his spine at the thought of the pits. Iruka hated the pits, hated the stench of blood and death. As much as he could, he avoided going. “I consider it a rather fitting end to such… detestable creatures whose only value in the end is whetting our people’s appetite for blood.”

“I suppose…” Iruka fell quiet and let out a soft breath as he released his brother’s hand to stare at the sea. “I will have to be there, won’t I?”

“They were foolish to attack an imperial caravan and make an attempt on your life. Your presence at their execution will be… expected.”

“I understand. I will be there tomorrow…” Iruka was not particularly thrilled by the opportunity. While he understood the importance of duty and politics, and that he now represented the face of the kingdom in harmless affairs, he truly disliked the fighting pits. He understood the logic of war and battle, but he could not understand, no matter how he tried, the logic of blood sports or what enjoyment could possibly be derived from watching men kill each other for entertainment. But these were Kamikaze’s traditions, and even though Iruka disagreed with them, he knew he had a duty to fulfill.

After all, their people would think the imperial family was weak if he did not attend, simply because he could not hold his stomach. Iruka was not a general or fine soldier like his brothers, he was not a great conqueror like his father, but he was not a weak prince.

“Do you have any special requests for the execution?” Ousame asked. Iruka expected such a question. The men had made an attempt on Iruka’s life, and as the victim of this thwarted assault, Iruka had the right to determine how they would die. He could pick any number of options, from armed combat to unleashing the most ferocious and hungriest of desert beasts onto the prisoners. But whichever path he picked, it would certainly be bloody and ignoble and end the same way.

"No," Iruka murmured, and suddenly all he could feel was the apprehension of going to the pits. There were but a few hours till the next day as it was almost noon. "I care little as to how they want to die, so long as they are punished. Unless you have other ideas, Aniue?"

Ousame considered Iruka for a long moment, and Iruka watched as his eyes briefly dropping down to the bandage wrapped around his throat. “A trial by combat, perhaps. They seemed to fare well against your imperial guard. Let’s see how they do against my Immortals.”

Iruka actually huffed a laugh at that. It seemed almost difficult to believe that his brother would unleash the wrath of the Immortals, the most legendary heavy infantry unit of the Kamikaze military, upon a group of thieves. The ten thousand strong division was as renowned for their prowess on the battlefield as they were for their enemy’s inability to decimate them. Even just a handful of them would be quite enough to destroy a few bandits. "They will not stand a chance. I almost feel sorry for them now." Iruka was pleased to see that his words pulled a smile from his older brother, who reached out to fondly ruffle his hair.

“You shouldn’t waste pity on creatures that are not even worthy of being called men.” Despite the viciousness of the words, Ousame’s tone was rather light. He gave Iruka a pat and then rose, straightening out his robes. “I suppose Chiryo will want to attend to you now. Shall I call him in?”

Before Iruka even had the opportunity to reply, the door burst open a second time, and his second oldest brother strolled in with his helmet tucked under his arm. Mizuki was fully dressed in a suit of crimson armor, which was fashioned after Ousame’s. But where the crown prince’s armor was gold, Mizuki’s was crimson, the same proud color of their banners. The water dragons on his chest were emblazoned with gold. It seemed he must have just returned from wherever it was Father had sent him; Iruka could see that there was still a great deal of sand on his boots.  “Ah, I see our little brother has finally woken up,” Mizuki said rather brightly with a smile and strode across the room, his armored feet clinking against the marble floor, leaving a trail of dirt in his wake. “I take it you rather enjoyed your beauty rest?”

Ousame gave Mizuki a mild look of rebuke for the taunt, but the slight grin he wore was unmistakable, no matter how much he attempted to hide it, much to Iruka’s consternation. “Come now, Mizuki, be nice. Don’t tease our little brother.”

"Ousame-nii was just telling me how the prisoners will face his Immortals. What do you think?"

Mizuki snorted with derision as he raised an eyebrow at Ousame. “Really, the Immortals. That’s a bit of overkill, even for you. By the time they’re done, there won’t be anything left to bury.”

Ousame smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “What makes you think that they deserve a burial? They attacked our brother.”

Iruka took Ousame's hand again to give it a squeeze, a reassuring gesture. "I am alright, I promise.  I only hope that whatever wound that  _thing_  has given me will not scar. Tomorrow, whatever happens, they will get what they deserve... Unless they somehow survive the Immortals. I doubt that, but..." Iruka looked at both his brothers because he knew, in theory, that one should never underestimate their opponents. "What if they survive? What happens then?"

His words drew a scoff from Mizuki.  “When have you ever heard of anyone surviving the Immortals? What a ridiculous notion.”  Mizuki could really be so condescending sometimes, and Iruka frowned slightly at his tone.

“Well, our little brother does have a point, Mizuki. It is always important to never underestimate your opponent, however small or insignificant he might be.” Ousame gave a wise nod. “Should they somehow manage to survive the trial by combat in the pits, by tradition, they will either be sent to the mines, or they will be sent to the blood camps, where they will train for the arena. If they somehow can prove their value in combat, their lives might yet be worth a little more than the blood they will spill to entertain our people.”

"Then I think it sounds fair. In the end, they will serve the people." No matter how Iruka disagreed with blood sports. "Will Ousame-nii and Mizuki-nii come tomorrow too?"

“We’ll both be there, won’t we, Mizuki?”

“I certainly won’t want to miss out on you unleashing the Immortals in the pits. That’s certainly a first.”

"I am glad that it is settled. I hope it won't be a long fight." It went without saying how Iruka  was not very excited about it. "I will let Chiryo in now so he can go about his fussing and we can all put this behind us. Will either of you be staying?"

After all, unlike Iruka, his brothers were almost always occupied with something or the other. No matter how much Iruka wanted to spend the rest of the day with Ousame smoking their water pipes and talking about Ousame's travels, Iruka knew that he was not, and never would be his brother’s first priority. Not with things like these. He was used to it.

“Unfortunately, little brother, Mizuki and I have other, more pressing matters to attend to. Father is expecting us for a council meeting.” Ousame said with a bit of an apologetic smile. “You need your rest, anyway.”

“Then you mustn't keep Father waiting. Please send Chiryo in when you see him. He is probably losing his mind in the hallway.” Iruka rolled his eyes and tugged the silk woven blanket a little higher. He had thought his sour mood would be alleviated and his worries comforted by the fact that he had all the answers he needed. If anything, Iruka was in an ever sourer mood than when he first woke. The smile was on his face though, warm and bright, just like how Mother once was. “I will see you both tomorrow, then. It’s been a terrible evening, I will spend the rest of my day in my room should any of you need me.”

Iruka had no plans to leave his bed at all.

“Do try and get some sun at some point, little brother. It wouldn’t do you any good to hide away in your bedchambers like a little _girl_.” Iruka didn’t much care for the smile Mizuki gave him then. It was somehow a little cruel, though his words certainly didn’t help at all, either; Iruka had to restrain his tongue and not start an argument he had no desires to be a part of.

Ousame seemed to think so as well, as he gave Mizuki a disapproving look and ushered him towards the door. “Come, brother, we have meetings to attend to. Iruka needs his rest.”

Iruka waited until the doors closed to turn his head the other way, and barely uttered a word when Chiryo fussed about and checked him thoroughly. He barely heard the instructions on the herbal teas he should take to relax, because all Iruka could see in his mind’s eye were a pair of cold gray eyes that were so angry, so resentful.

Tomorrow, he was going to see that man again.

Maybe when he finally lost his life and bled out onto the sands, Iruka would stop thinking about him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this chapter! We'd love to hear your comments and thoughts as to whether you're enjoying this fic! Let us know what you think! 
> 
> _Some notes of interest:_ As nation-states didn't exist before the rise of the shinobi, Kamikaze is a city-state that oversees a vast empire comprised of other city-states, territories, etc. Each of these territories has vastly different cultures, dialects, traditions, etc. Kagutsuchi is inspired heavily by ancient Japan/China, and Kamikaze is heavily inspired by ancient Persia and the Roman Empire.
> 
> \- "Aniue" is a formal, archaic honorific for "older brother" in Japanese.


End file.
